Thursday, June 23, 2016

Falling Off the 9/11 Beam

This is the 25,911 published post on this blog.

"The ‘truthers’ and 9/11" by Alex Beam November 16, 2015

I have a somewhat romantic view of architects. They seem to be generally smart and well educated, and ply their trade at the intersection of art and craft. In movies they are always well-groomed, sashaying around their tastefully designed studios, making insightful observations.

So imagine my surprise to learn about the “architect truthers,” a tiny, vocal subset of the profession that insists the US government is hiding the truth about the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, and other 9/11 events. San Francisco-based architect Richard Gage is the founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and will be speaking here next week at ABX, an annual trade show produced by the Boston Society of Architects.

Gage’s calling card is the 15-minute video “Architects and Engineers – Solving the Mystery of Building 7.” Narrated by actor/activist Ed Asner, the short film asserts that the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7, a partially occupied office tower that fell down hours after the Twin Towers’ collapse, was destroyed by “controlled demolition.” (Thankfully, no one died; the building was evacuated three hours before its collapse.) In the video, various experts converge on the conclusion that such a demolition “takes months, therefore this event must have been planned in advance.”Seven is a good start for research, and it is well known in the industry that the placing of charges does require significant planning.

It’s hard to understand how Asner, an early 9/11 “truther” who has suggested that investors profited from 9/11, or the running gag line that is Geraldo Rivera, also featured in the video, add to the group’s credibility. “We’re not using Geraldo for our credibility,” Gage told me, “We’re using our appearance on mainstream media [Fox News] to gain credit for our cause.”Ed must mean the short-selling of certain airline stocks.

The late University of Massachusetts professor Lynn Margulis appears in the video, calling the official Trade Center investigations “the most unscientific thing you could think of.” She is correctly identified as a “scientist,” although we are not told that her field is evolutionary biology.

Gage has struggled to gain credibility within the architectural profession.That there is a standard tactic of the e$tabli$hment. When you can't refute the evidence you attack the credibility of the presenter. Maybe you should just decide for yourself.

The president of the American Institute of Architects, for instance, has called the three-year-long, government-financed National Institute of Standards and Technology investigation into the buildings’ collapse “valid and credible.” “That is the official version,” Gage responds. “The forensic evidence points otherwise.”So do the immutable laws of physics.

Gage won’t say who he thinks sabotaged the Trade Center buildings, but his adherents are not so shy. At an event he organized in 2012, one 9/11 “truther” said, “I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into believing that our government and the Israeli government, the Israeli Mossad, could be responsible for the Twin Towers demolition.” Another attendee reported, “At least three firefighters in New York at Ground Zero who came upon a large store of gold at the Twin Towers were executed by FBI.”That's a very interesting take.Related:

"Microsoft Corp. chief executive Satya Nadella said his company is committed to the emerging market for artificial intelligence-based chat software, one week after the company’s first Internet chat bot in the United States was so manipulated by users that it had to be pulled down. On March 23, Microsoft released Tay, an online AI chat bot designed to mimic the personality of a teenager, to attract millennial users. Yet the company had to yank the program after Internet users taught it to spew racist, sexist, and pornographic remarks in what the company called a “coordinated attack” that took advantage of a “critical oversight.” In his keynote, Nadella said the company is taking a principled approach to AI in the wake of Tay’s misbehavior. “We want to build tech so it gets the best of humanity not the worst,” he said."They had to shut it down because most of the chatter was Bush did 9/11.

I'm not going to argue about what everyone knows and it won't take you long to scroll through the floors to get there.

“We’ll let the chips fall where they may as to who perpetrated these acts,” Gage says. “We’re not journalists, who should be following the money in this massive crime – that’s for you as a journalist to follow up.”They failed; that's why there are blogs.

I am not in the business of abridging Mr. Gage’s free speech rights. But it is important to understand the “truthers’” core message: Someone, they hint darkly, consciously demolished the World Trade Center, killing more than 3,000 of our fellow citizens in the process. That someone could be only our own government, or terrorists aided and abetted by our government.Please remember the free speech part, and he's a fool. Government has lied us into wars for centuries. Iraq WMD, Gulf of Tonkin?

Doubtless some Americans think the events of September 11, 2001, haven’t been fully explained. I don’t agree. We now know much more about the violent, anti-Western jihad that is slaughtering innocent victims everywhere than we did 14 years ago. But even if you think that “the truth is out there,” to cite the silly tag line from the old “X-Files” TV series — this isn’t it.Thank God we have hit bottom.

"Man vowed ‘war’ in letter left with incendiary devices in Tyngsborough" by Milton J. Valencia Globe Staff April 04, 2016

A Chelmsford man accused of attaching several incendiary devices to high-voltage power lines in Tyngsborough last week, allegedly to force changes to the American court system, has a history of vandalizing communication cables as a form of protest and as part of a scheme to extort money from Verizon and Comcast.

Danny M. Kelly, 61, blamed the companies for his unemployment.

In the latest case, prosecutors said that Kelly sought retribution against the court system and attached devices similar to pipe bombs, with fuses and containing chemicals, to National Grid electric lines. He left a rambling note on one of the poles that held the lines, demanding National Grid’s help in bringing change to the court system.

Authorities later determined that the bombs contained thermite, which could be used to cut through metal.I was shocked when I saw the word in my paper.

Kelly allegedly recently received two shipments of 20 pounds of iron oxide and five pounds of aluminum powder that, when combined, form thermite.

“The improvised devices at the Tyngsborough fire appeared consistent with thermite devices,’’ FBI Special Agent Scott P. McGaunn wrote in an affidavit filed with the court.

Authorities said that Kelly left a computer-generated note on a pole at the center of the crime scene that claimed responsibility for the devices.This is where the whole thing starts to stink like another psyop.

The note demanded that National Grid help the author persuade the judicial system to pay him back for the “damage they did to my family.”

The note suggested that the company open communications with him by creating a mailing address where he could contact a point person.

The company would have to post a job position on Craigslist for a security worker in Tyngsborough, and the mailing address for sending resumes would be the one Kelly would use to communicate with the point person.

The note threatened that the author would teach others how to use the incendiary devices if National Grid did not comply with his demand.

“So the question is whether or not you will help me get the courts to actually respect the law and undo the damage they did to my family,” the letter stated. “If not, I might as well do my part in destroying the society.”

Authorities said they determined that Kelly wrote the note based on its similarities to his past crimes.

Kelly has also filed more than a dozen seemingly frivolous civil lawsuits against various defendants, including the town of Chelmsford, complaining about his property rights, and one in federal court in Indiana.

In one of the complaints, Kelly states that he has stage 4 cancer and is dying, and that his family is being punished. He has lost all 14 cases in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in which he represented himself....

The FBI is investigating whether a third, unknown person discussed an alleged terrorism plot with Alexander Ciccolo, the Western Massachusetts man accused of planning to attack a state university with guns and explosives on behalf of the Islamic State terror group.The connections lead to Tennessee, and this whole thing is absurd. The third man is undoubtedly the patsy's case officer or handler of the informant they planted to stir up trouble and frame the poor sap.

FBI Special Agent Jeffrey J. Lawrence said in an affidavit filed in US District Court in Springfield last week that Ciccolo told a witness who was cooperating with the FBI that he had discussed his terrorism plans with one other person.That would be his dad, right? He's the one who alerted them.

“There was a brother who wanted to be involved a while ago and he has not been responding to my messages,” Ciccolo told the witness, who provided copies of the July 1 online conversation to authorities.

Lawrence said in the affidavit, “It appears as though Ciccolo was telling [the cooperating witness] that at least one other individual had previously indicated that he wanted to be involved in his terrorism plot.”

The affidavit was part of an application for a search warrant authorities filed with the court. Officials are seeking access to Ciccolo’s online Skype account as part of their investigation into the alleged terror plot.

No one else has been charged in Ciccolo’s alleged scheme.

The witness who is cooperating with the FBI had alerted authorities to the alleged plot in June 2015, then at the FBI’s request agreed to provide weapons to Ciccolo in a sting operation.It's another in an endless line of FBI frame ups!

Ciccolo, 24, of Adams, was arrested in 2015 after he had taken possession of the weapons – two rifles and two handguns, authorities said.

Ciccolo also allegedly built several Molotov cocktails and purchased a pressure cooker to build a bomb, similar to the one used in the Boston Marathon attacks, according to authorities. He had not obtained explosive powder, however, according to court filings.

The Globe has previously reported that Ciccolo’s father is a Boston police captain who alerted the FBI to his son’s desire to fight for the Islamic State, prompting the investigation.

Ciccolo has been held without bail on charges of illegally possessing a firearm and assault, for allegedly stabbing a nurse with a pen after his arrest.

Prosecutors say they may seek additional charges against him, including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.So he will either be kept locked up or to be used as a sword of Damocles to make him confess, sign the paper, and shut up.

His attorney, David Hoose, said he could not comment on the affidavit because of the ongoing case. He has argued that the FBI created the alleged terrorism plot by providing Ciccolo with weapons.

Lawrence said in the affidavit supporting the application for the search warrant that Ciccolo’s Skype account could contain “evidence, fruits, and instrumentalities of these crimes” in his ongoing investigation.

Skype is a social-networking website that allows users to participate in one-on-one and group video calls and messages over the Internet. According to Lawrence’s affidavit, terror groups such as the Islamic State are increasingly using social networking sites such as Skype as communication platforms to spread ideology and recruit supporters.Pfft! Those groups have been created, funded, and directed by the U.S. government and its allies.Sorry, but that cat is out of that bag!

The affidavit also alleges that Ciccolo discussed the idea of creating a local terrorism cell to carry out local attacks.

The search warrant seeksto have Microsoft – which owns Skype – provide the government with logs and the content of conversations and written messages made on Ciccolo’s account, as well as passwords. The account was created under the username alialamriki1, which is similar to what Ciccolo used for other social-media accounts.

A spokesperson for Microsoft could not be reached for comment Sunday, though the company has said before that it provides law enforcement with whatever information is legally required and technically feasible. The company has been criticized before by privacy advocates who argued that the company redesigned Skype to make it easier for law enforcement to review user information.

According to Lawrence’s affidavit, authorities discovered some of Ciccolo’s Skype chats with a woman, Nicolette Baboolal, who had been engaged to marry Ciccolo and lives in the Caribbean nation Trinidad and Tobago.

According to the affidavit, Baboolal criticized Ciccolo’s rants about war and violence, saying they were not the true teachings of Islam. She threatened to end their relationship.

“Your whole motto is kill kill kill kill,” she had written to him on March 11, 2015, four months before his arrest, according to the affidavit. “That is worrying behavior.”

"Charles Hirsch, 79; worked for years to identify 9/11 victims" by Sam Roberts New York Times April 15, 2016

NEW YORK — Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, the New York City chief medical examiner who raced to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and returned to the morgue with every rib broken to face the monumental forensic challenge of identifying the 2,753 victims of the attacks, died on Friday in Westwood, N.J. He was 79.No kidding. Must have been because he was sifting through that toxic stew of dust and debris.

His death, from complications of several illnesses, was announced by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office. Dr. Hirsch, a forensic pathologist, was the chief medical examiner from 1989 to 2013. Dr. Hirsch, a taciturn and meticulous Chicagoan, was a special panel’s unanimous choice to fill the vacancy.

In 2001, when two jetliners commandeered by terrorists struck the World Trade Center, Dr. Hirsch and six aides rushed downtown to establish a temporary morgue.

When the North Tower collapsed, two aides were severely injured. Dr. Hirsch, thrown to the ground, broke all of his ribs. His cuts sutured by a medical team, he returned to the examiner’s squat brick headquarters at First Avenue and 30th Street, coated in a ghostlike gray soot.

That substance, which he would keep in a glass bowl on his desk, explained the cause of the victims’ deaths.

“If reinforced concrete was rendered into dust,” he told The New York Times in 2002, “then it wasn’t much of a mystery as to what would happen to people.”

His job was to give the victims back their names and restore what had distinguished them.

More than 16,000 body parts that had not been identified or returned to families were dried to delay decomposition and to redeem Dr. Hirsch’s pledge to do whatever it took, for as long as it took, to identify every victim.And where was the government that so loves you and wants to protect you with total surveillance tyranny? They didn't care about those remains, and even told citizens to go back in, the air is fine, and wipe up all the dust with a damp rag.

Privately, his original goal was to identify about 2,000, or 70 percent. Dr. Hirsch later acknowledged that many of the remains had been cremated immediately in the attack or during the fires that smoldered for months.

He wrote in a 2003 letter that it was “virtually certain that at least some human tissue” was mixed with debris that had been carted off to Staten Island landfill.They threw the remains of those lives in the garbage -- literally.

Teeth, wedding rings, genetic markers from hair samples, and other means of matching a microscopic body part to a name were fed into a database. To ease the pain of victims’ families, death certificates were issued without the presence of bodies.

By the time Dr. Hirsch retired, 1,634 of the 2,753 people killed or missing — about 59 percent — had been identified.

In the mold of Dr. Milton Helpern, who held the position from 1954 to 1973, Dr. Hirsch was fiercely independent. Serving under four mayors, from Koch through Michael R. Bloomberg, he rebuffed public pressure in controversial cases.

As an expert witness for the prosecution, he rebutted the testimony of a former chief medical examiner, Dominick DiMaio, who said that the four men at whom Bernard Goetz, the so-called subway vigilante, aimed his gun in a Manhattan train in 1984 were standing in a menacing semicircle when they were shot. (Goetz was acquitted of attempted murder anyway.)

In another high-profile case, Dr. Hirsch was recruited by Robert B. Fiske Jr., the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Janet Reno to inquire into the 1993 death of Vincent W. Foster Jr., a White House deputy counsel in the Clinton administration. Foster’s body was found in a park in Virginia. Dr. Hirsch rejected the claims of conspiracy theorists that Foster had been murdered to cover up potential scandals and ruled the death a suicide.Related: The Death of Vincent FosterDoes not make on feel good about a potential Clinton presidency, but then again, nothing about her does (imho).

A year later, in a case that raised questions about police brutality, Dr. Hirsch declared that Anthony Baez, a 29-year-old security guard, had died while in police custody of asphyxiation caused by “compression of his neck and chest.” A scuffle had ensued after the football that Baez and his brothers were tossing accidentally hit a police car.Not much has changed in 20 years.

A number of experts had blamed the World Trade Center attack for the 2006 death of James Zadroga, a police detective who had spent 450 hours as a rescue worker at ground zero. Dr. Hirsch unequivocally attributed his death of respiratory disease to other causes. (The Zadroga case prompted state and federal legislation expanding treatment and benefits.)

Charles Sidney Hirsch was born in Chicago to Max Hirsch, an electrician, and the former Dorothy Gurevitz.

He received a bachelor of science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 1958, and graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago. He originally planned to open a general practice in Alaska — while it was isolated, he acknowledged, “I’m a very self-contained kind of a person and I don’t recall ever in my life being lonesome” — but during an internship in Cleveland he found his true calling in forensic pathology.

He served as a pathologist in Baltimore and was a deputy coroner in Cuyahoga and Hamilton counties, Ohio, before being hired as the chief medical examiner of Suffolk County on Long Island in 1985.

He married Marie-Calude Fenart, who died before him. He leaves their daughter, Sophie Ghiraldini, and two grandsons....Well, what he found in the remains and his story has now been silenced.

--more--"There is great debate within the "9/11 Truth" movement -- for lack of a better word -- about what really caused the towers to fall, with many accusations hurled back and forth regarding the integrity of presenters. Some say it is thermite and controlled demolitions, and there would seem to be evidence for that. Others say the explosions may have been nuclear, and there is some evidence for that. You will have to decide for yourself what you think happened down there that day regarding what struck and felled the three WTC towers (perhaps a combination of both). One thing arguing about the scenery does is distract from the who did it, why they did it, and who benefited from it.

NEW YORK — New York is about to find out whether it’s possible to build a 35-gate terminal at LaGuardia Airport around the existing one without disrupting operations or being plagued by cost overruns and delays.

To finance construction, a group created by the Swedish construction company Skanska AB, Canadian airport operator Vantage Airport Group, and France’s Meridiam sold $2.4 billion of debt Tuesday in the biggest offering of municipal bonds since March. The group, which put up $200 million in equity for the $4 billion project, guarantees it will be finished, on budget, in six years.

“The fact that the consortium has $200 million at risk is 200 million reasons why they’re going to be focused on getting this done,” said Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns and operates the airport’s 52-year-old central terminal.

The authority is relying on the consortium to design, build, finance, and operate the new terminal, seeking to avoid the type of cost overruns that dogged rebuilding of the World Trade Center.

The project will revamp an airport that Vice President Joe Biden famously likened to one in a third-world country.

Investors are snapping up debt for lower-rated projects to boost returns as municipal bonds yield the least since the 1960s. Moody’s Investors Service, which called the construction project among the most complex it has evaluated, ranks the bonds Baa3, one step above junk. Fitch Ratings grades them BBB, one level higher.

Citigroup, which managed the LaGuardia deal, priced 5 percent coupon bonds maturing in 30 years at 3.27 percent, after earlier marketing them for 3.52 percent.

The debt will be repaid with fees from airlines and concession revenues. According to the official offering, when the new terminal is fully operational, airline-generated revenue and charges will be enough to cover debt service on the bonds.

“It’s going to be an expensive terminal, no doubt, but it’s not out of whack with what airlines expect to spend in New York,” said Moody’s analyst Earl Heffintrayer. “In theory, if no one ever bought a sandwich or a beer or a sweatshirt in the terminal, the bondholders would get paid so long as an airline shows up.”

The Port Authority is contributing $1 billion to the project and spending another $1.2 billion for roads, parking and a “central hall” to connect the new terminal to those serving Delta Air Lines.

LaGuardia’s new terminal will be 64 percent bigger than the current one and have more restaurants, lounges, stores, larger areas around the gates, and improved passenger and baggage screening.

A key element is the relocation of a parking garage in front of the current terminal, where a new check-in area will be built.

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